Villa Park will be an official stadium in EA SPORTS FIFA 16

In the midst of the buzzing EA booth over at E3, I managed to get some time with Nick Channon from EA Sports to talk about this year's upcoming FIFA 16. It's a given that each year yields another addition to the franchise, but this time around the developers have admitted to having more time to explore the capabilities of the new generation of console. The results are clear to see, with many of them being obvious visual improvements.

We are delighted to announce that Villa Park will be an official stadium in EA SPORTS FIFA 16! The announcement follows news that EA SPORTS has extended their existing agreement until the end of the 2018-19 season, which now incorporates the sponsorship of the League's Goal Decision System.

As a longstanding partner of the Premier League, EA SPORTS has been connecting to real world football through a number of partnership initiatives with the Premier League, including the EA SPORTS Player Performance Index - an in-depth statistics matrix measuring player's all round contribution - and the Fantasy Premier League game.

FIFA 16 is currently under development for the Sony PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita, Microsoft Xbox One and Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii and 3DS, and PC. The game is expected to be released in the United States on September 23 and in the United Kingdom on September 26. Despite all of EA's impressive efforts to date, there was always a slightly mechanical feel to the players and their animations. This time around, according to Channon, EA have implemented an emotional overlay to every player on the pitch, which helps inject a more human aspect to the characters.

Lionel Messi, star forward for FC Barcelona and the Argentina national team, will be featured on the cover of the game. Messi was awarded the Golden Ball trophy as the best player of the recently concluded World Cup 2014, where Argentina finished as the runner-up behind champion Germany. One of the closest competitors of the FIFA franchise is Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer, which announced that the game will be making its debut in next-generation consoles later on this year.